


Traditions Among the Stars

by SophieRipley



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Colonization, Depression, F/M, Loneliness, Love, Science Fiction, Space Flight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 19:56:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9783515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SophieRipley/pseuds/SophieRipley
Summary: After recognizing an incoming threat to all life on the planet, the Zootopian government researches and builds colony ships to send into space; on one of these is Judy Hopps, sleeping in cryostasis with a hundred thousand other mammals.  When she wakes a year early alone on a ship that may as well be empty of life, she finds it hard to bear.





	

Zootopia—The Shining City, the City of Communion, Place of Brotherhood and Fraternity—had always stood for advancement and progress, both socially and scientifically.  The Zootopian climate control system, for example, was among the most advanced climate and terraforming technology on the planet.  Many of the world’s most prominent scientists of all species were in Zootopia, by birth or relocation. 

So it was that when the sun ejected a massive spurt of material large enough and hot enough and fast enough to destroy all life on a planet, the scientists of Zootopia studied it and discovered why.  So it was that when the signs came for another ejection scientists of Zootopia were able to predict its trajectory years ahead of time.

So it was that the scientists of Zootopia—the smartest, the best of the best in the world—designed the Exodus Fleet.  For years they toiled and designed and engineered until finally it was completed:  a thousand massive starships bound for the stars, each moving in a different direction, each hoping against hope that their target would hold the necessary conditions to support a population of living mammals and plants.  On each ship were crew and passengers; crew chosen because they were the best at what they did, passengers chosen by lottery. 

The biggest of all the ships, the most hopeful, the one bound for the best possible chance of a new home, was the Starship Absolution.  It held a hundred thousand mammals deep in its belly, each individual nestled within an electronic womb, cryogenic biopods designed to preserve their lives in a state of gentle cold undconsciousness to sleep away the long years of the voyage across the void between the stars.

By the time the ship reached full speed it was moving at a significant percentage of the speed of light, and quietly it sped through the expanse.  It was entirely automated, all course corrections and velocity changes performed by the computer using a rigorous and complicated troubleshooting program. 

The ship was programmed to wake the crew—and only the crew—one week before reaching its destination, so that the crew could take readings of the planet and decide if the destination was good enough.  Something, however, went wrong somewhere along the processing line, a toggle tripped early or a fuse blown in exactly the wrong place.  Instead of waking the captain a week before arrival so that she could wake the crew and get started, the captain’s cryopod shut down in a system failure a full year before the scheduled time. 

Thankfully, the cryopod systems had backups of backups which allowed the mammal inside to survive and be woken even during the worst failure, and so Judy Hopps woke.  She had been a police officer once, trained to notice out of place details, and so she quickly realized the mistake.  The chronometer showed the Absolution had been in flight for very nearly a thousand years—meaning the planet they’d left behind, her _home_ , was now little more than a cinder cleansed in the fires of an enormous coronal mass ejection, the surface reduced to slag.  The Earth That Was no doubt now lay as a graveyard, a tomb for all those who remained behind.  All those too unlucky—or too stubborn—to make it on one of the Exodus ships.  Those like Bogo, who fought to the last possible moment to get all those he cared about a place on one ship or another, but who in the last seconds gave up his own place to someone who never even had a chance.

Those like her parents, who valued their own home and their own soil and the long tradition of the Hopps working that land above their own lives.

They had been gone for a thousand years.  Most of the Hopps children managed to make it off the planet, but precious few on this ship, and none among the crew.  This left Captain Judy Hopps feeling very alone indeed when she saw the chronometer’s countdown to arrival read not half a dozen days or even a couple dozen but several _hundred_ , a full year and then some.  Judy knew then that she’d be alone for a long time, because while this ship—a colony ship holding thousands—was full to bursting with food and supplies, they’d need as much as they could possibly keep for the first harsh year on their new home while the terraforming transformed a barely livable world into one in which farming was possible.  She was a rabbit, and so taking a little food for herself each day would never be missed…but she’d be unable to justify waking the rest of the crew simply for company.

So she didn’t.  She donned her uniform and settled in for a long wait.

Judy Hopps spent the next few months entertaining herself as best she could.  She ran every morning after waking, up and down the length of the ship, through the cargo hold and among the aisles and aisles of cryopods.  She repeated this run every night before taking her sleep in the Captain’s Quarters.  Every day she’d tour the ship checking and rechecking every system, despite knowing that the ship’s automated maintenance had it well in paw.  And in the moments when she could find nothing to do, Judy remembered.  She remembered her parents, and she remembered Bogo, and she remembered the wind in the trees and the scent of purple tulips in the spring.  She remembered what _living was_. 

The days stretched on and blurred together.  At first it was fun being alone after so long of being surrounded by mammals, and then it became normal.  And then after that the reality of Solitude began to set in, and Judy understood why Solitary Confinement drove mammals completely mad.  She began to understand how silence could become louder and more destructive than gunfire, how extended loneliness could cause your gasping mind to play tricks, making you hear laughter and pleading and even words just round the corner when there was nobody there, never anybody there, nobody but the ghosts of those left behind because she failed them, couldn’t convince them to uproot and come with.  The mocking silence continued to press ever more inward, becoming more and more stifling until sometimes Judy felt like she was gasping for air and getting none, being strangled to death on her own inability to cope.

And after the ninety-seventh day awake, the ninety-seventh day completely alone, Judy could no longer repress her loneliness.  She continued to run every morning and every evening but in between those times, she sat upon Cryogenic Biopod #-093, the name emblazoned upon which was [Wilde, N. P., _Vulpes vulpes_ , 36, _Commander SS Absolution_ ]. 

The pod’s up-turned window was sturdy enough that her slight weight risked no damage at all and so she pined away the endless cold hours staring down at her sleeping partner, who would—once he woke—become her second in command.  She watched him as he twitched in his sleep and remembered his voice.  Remembered his snark, and his stubbornness and his smile.

Finally, on the one hundred ninth day Judy could take it no more.  The endless deafening silence was too much, the memories of her parents and the echoes of dying laughter conjured by her depressed mind unable to be stifled, and she did what she knew she shouldn’t have done.

She began the shut down sequence on Pod #093.  One more mouth draining resources wouldn’t matter that much, and the pain of solitude was becoming unbearable.  It would kill her if she let it go on.

Shut down took thirty hours.  It should have taken ninety to reduce the shock of waking, but Nick was strong and Judy’s strength was at its last breath. And during those thirty hours, she never left the pod.  She even slept next to it when she could no longer hold herself awake.

And at long, long last the hissing sound of the pod disengaging and opening roused her from her fugue of anticipation.  The pod turned slowly, gently from its upturned position to a vertical one letting the occupant step out.

Nick lunged from the pod, collapsing on all fours, shaking like a leaf, and heaving his long, lean body forward as he choked on bile, his body attempting to void a stomach that was empty already.

He coughed and choked and heaved for several long moments and the horror of the sound of dry vomiting was paradoxical music to Judy’s ears.  She put a paw on his shoulder as his choking died down and Nick jerked away from her automatically, looking up in near panic.

When he saw who it was, he fell back to the floor in a slump.  “Jesus, Carrots,” he croaked, his voice harsh and raspy, “something went wrong, that was harsh.”

Judy wrapped her arms around him and pulled him up.  “I know, Nick, I’m sorry, that was my fault.  I rushed the waking protocol.”

Nick let himself be dragged to his feet, his shaking slowing down.  He smoothed the skin-tight cryo jumpsuit compulsively.  “Rushed it, why?  What, you couldn’t handle a measly four days without me?”

He looked up from his clothes to grin at Judy, but the smile died as he saw her.  The rabbit looked like death.  Her fur was coming out in patches, her eyes were lined heavily with exhaustion, she looked like she hadn’t been eating, and her uniform—what of it she was wearing—was practically in tatters, the jacket hanging loose and missing even her rank insignia.  As fastidious as she usually was about her uniform, this was—to say the least—shocking.

What was worse, the bunny was shaking as badly as Nick had been moments before, curled in on herself as if in fear, looking at him like he was a ghost.

“What _happened_?!” gasped Nick, grabbing Judy by the shoulders and kneeling down to peer into her eyes at her own level.

Instead of answering, she fell into him, clutching him tightly and crying.  He held her then, surrounded by sleeping mammals and deep silence, and let her purge the emotion.  And once she stopped crying, he lifted her up and padded his way to the captain’s quarters, into her private bath, and gently washed her.  All the while, Judy mutely held onto him, never looking away.

It wasn’t until he began toweling her dry that she finally spoke.  “I’m sorry.  I couldn’t handle it.  I’m sorry.”

Nick shook his head.  “Don’t apologize, just explain what happened.”

So she told him.  Told him how she woke alone and how she thought she could handle the solitude but was woefully wrong.  Told him how it had been almost four months since she’d woken and they had another eight before they reached their new home.

And Nick cradled her to him, stroking her naked back softly.  “Judy, you should have woken me sooner.  Of all creatures to try living alone you thought it could be a rabbit?  I’m right here, okay?  I’m not going anywhere.  I’ll be here for you.”

He took her paw in his, the silver band on his finger clinking against the gold on hers, and he brought her paw to his lips, kissing it softly. 

“I was too weak to handle it on my own and now I’ve condemned you to eight months of loneliness,” muttered Judy, staring at the place where his lips touched her fur.

Nick chuckled.  “Carrots, I’m a fox.  Being alone is what I’m good at.  Besides, I’m not alone:  I have my wife with me.  That’s all the company I need.”  He drew her up and out of the bathroom, dressed her in a fresh uniform, and then escorted her to the mess hall where he set up a cozy meal just for the two of them.  He’d have lit a candle if it had been safe, but it wasn’t so he made do with a flashlight set upright.  In the background Nick had the computer play soft classical music, and for the first time in nearly four months Judy smiled.

She smiled, because she was no longer alone.  She smiled, because she loved her husband.  She smiled because he loved her, and because he was handsome and because the big bad fox would always chase away the ghosts of her insecurities.  She smiled because the food tasted sweet again, and because the warmth of his paw in hers was comforting, and because she could smell the foxy musk she’d missed.

And she smiled because even though Nick hadn’t looked at a chronometer the entire time he’d been awake, couldn’t have known the date, he’d nonetheless managed to perform an age-old tradition that he’d always _always_ sworn was hokey and dumb but had never failed to take part in.  She knew he had no idea today was Valentine’s Day, knew the holiday probably didn’t even have meaning anymore, but still Nick Wilde had managed to maintain the tradition of a romantic dinner.

It would be a long eight months, even with company.  But Judy was certain that with Nick at her side, she could endure it.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my submission for Valentine's Day. I know it's late, I'm sorry. Please leave comments if you have them, and I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> EDIT: This story was NOT inspired by the film Passenger or by any other specific film or book; I have in fact never seen the film Passenger to be inspired by it. I mention this because I'm getting a flood of comments, messages, and reviews about this. Thank you for your understanding.


End file.
